


the merits of disembowelment

by butterflyswimmer



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Bad Ending, Dark, Death, Drama, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Sad, Short, Spoilers, Trauma, Violence, rika pov, tsumihoroboshi bad end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 07:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyswimmer/pseuds/butterflyswimmer
Summary: The final scene was never a pleasant one - no, she thinks, but some were certainly worse than others.





	the merits of disembowelment

**Author's Note:**

> this work deals with one of the worlds similar to tsumihoroboshi-hen that ended in tragedy. it contains upsetting themes and heavy implied violence towards the main characters and other children.

It’s not the first time, and Hanyuu seems more upset by the novelty.

That’s what it is. This time she hadn’t even made it to Watanagashi.

 

A waste. A waste, a waste. She doesn’t have time to rack her brains for how long it’s been since this last happened as she tries to calm a steadily more frantic Satoko. Emotions are like static in the classroom, and everything’s getting closer, and one of the kids is shaking so badly their chair falls, and they lie there, tied to it as it rattles like a wooden snake.

 

You wouldn’t think Rika was the only one who knew with certainty they’d all be dead in a quarter of an hour.

 

Certainty. Maybe that’s what allows her to be calm - or whatever emotion this is.

 

She doesn’t remember the last time, but she’s seen it before. Somehow, she knows - the sky is nearly the shade it’ll be when the school plumes black smoke into the sky. She remembers the screams - and not being able to tell if they’re from around her or outside, real or else a psychological side effect of plunging into purgatory. It was like the sensation of being pushed underwater suddenly and head-first, chlorine searing up your nose.

 

Dying this way left an impression. There was no travel sickness like opening your eyes to early June sky moments after your skin had melted clean off your bones. Last time, she’d thrown up violently, without abandon, not caring whether her friends saw. That night she’d dreamt of people searching the ruins in an all-too-warm twilight for teeth. Of course, she hadn’t understood it then. In Hinamizawa, the nightmares reside in daylight.

 

She’s getting ahead of herself, and Satoko is taking wet, heaving gasps, and she’s mildly annoyed. Why does this have to happen again?

 

In nine minutes they’ll all be dead, and they seem to know it. How did humans do that? It wasn’t Rena’s howling down the phone, it wasn’t the hour hand’s guillotine-glide, it wasn’t the lighter in loose fingers. It wasn’t even the gasoline in the pipe running along the wall right by the room they were in, attached to the bomb in the gutter, because the whole room smelt of it now, and even their clothes were doused, scorching their nostrils. Maybe it was Satoko who had started it, trying desperately not to make a noise, burying her face in Rika’s shirt. Children shouldn’t have to stifle their sobs - one asks now if he can talk to his mother.

 

Rika knows. She knows, because it’s the same, the same, the same. Spinal fluid soaking into mouldy newspapers, “I have something to do today,” - Rena had kept rubbing her hands on her skirt, rubbing, rubbing, picking under her fingernails. Next time I’ll know where to find her, Rika thinks. Next time I’ll use the injection. An afterthought, like trying to clear a level in a video game. A, A, B - GAME OVER.

 

Four minutes. Hanyuu is sitting at the back of the classroom like burning this scene into her eyes is some kind of atonement, and Rika can’t tell her cries from those of the children any more. Louder, louder - maybe that was why she still did it. Rika got to die. Hanyuu saw it all.

Rika could measure tragedy by how many minutes it took for her to show up. There were times like that one before - her friends would arrive first, and she’d have to experience being thrust back into her existence with no preparation. It was more than her brain could take.

 

In that world, Hanyuu had taken three minutes. She had ended up rushed on Keiichi’s back to the clinic, after she hadn’t been able to tell her friends what year it was, or her name. She’d been diagnosed with a concussion.

A concussion. You could call it that.

 

By the time Hanyuu had caught up with her, like some convoluted game of tag across time, it was too late. She’d known, and only bothered appearing by the time Rika was in bed with drugs seeping into her bloodstream. She had shouted, then. What could’ve taken her so long, and wasn’t she used to it all by now? No, not the dull ache of hopelessness, nor the sharp of the knife - but surely the intestines splayed out over the shrine floor like she was some kind of kite? Maybe once they had been young enough to wonder what the inside of a stomach looked like.

 

Three minutes. The sky is orange now, ready to receive. She hates that colour.

 _No_ , Hanyuu had said - for once simple, direct - and that had been all. The tone Rika despised, the one that said _I know more than you_. _I didn’t forget._

 

Did they know yet? Had Rena said anything? She can’t tell, and that frustrates her. A pointless end to a pointless world.

 

Her limbs are stiff against the constraints, and she’s probably got a splinter in her neck, and it doesn’t matter, because soon she won’t have one of those at all. Still, she cranes her head - so what if one sudden move made Rena flick the lighter? Was it wrong, to end fourteen young lives one minute and thirty-two seconds sooner than they might’ve lived otherwise? She can’t work out the answer to that question any more.

 

Mion’s still at the wall, held up by that lock around her neck like she’s cattle, and with enough time her shoulders would probably dislocate from the position, but Rika can’t tell for sure, because she understands the world through her friends’ faces, and Mion’s is covered in blood.

 

She knows they know when Keiichi crawls up to her and begins to wipe desperately with his sleeve, like it’ll stain her skin. She knows when he does it like he all at once wants it to matter and knows it doesn’t, when he wants to see her face, wants her to see his, doesn’t want it like this, at least - these are the moments in burning buildings where people start jumping.

 

There’s one minute left when Rena screams at him, and he screams back. Fifty-six seconds when her face says, “do what you want, it’s over”.

Fifty seconds when she remembers to wriggle one cramped arm out of the skipping rope the way she’s known how to all this time. Forty-eight when she caresses Satoko’s hair the way she’s learnt how to, from all this time. Forty-five when Keiichi is crying loudest of all - awful noises from the other side of the classroom, desperate, gulping.

Forty seconds is when he looks to Rena one last time, and Rika tries to understand it, can’t - like she could see anything any more apart from blue, coming toward her like she’s falling from the other side of the sky. Thirty-three is when Keiichi makes his choice: A - jump, B - duck, X - you’ll never know, because you’ve thrown your controller across the room at Level 2. Thirty is the white blanket eighteen floors up, teeth in the rubble, slumping down under the window to succumb to smoke, using the last half minute of your limbs to embrace her head.

Twenty seconds is when Rika wants to look away as he begins to try and tear open the lock with his own fingernails, like being blown into oblivion wouldn’t be so bad alone.

Fifteen is when she realises she can’t and their foreheads are pressed together, blood-sticky hair and gasoline-stained fingers wiping tears and Mion begging Rena to cut free her arms so she can at least hold him.

 

Five is when Rena’s collapsed under the blackboard and the room sounds like it’s full of animals and she’s too tired to find Hanyuu, like being separated from a parent on a busy train platform, like fingers losing grip and her mouthing to you to stay there, stay there soundlessly through the glass before the train plummets into the tunnel.

 

A lot can happen in a minute. She closes her eyes.

 

Time to fake a concussion.

**Author's Note:**

> read yoigoshi the other day, haven't been able to stop thinking about it, so that's where the blame for this lies


End file.
